Dmytro Udovychenko of Ukraine wins the 2024 Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition
Congratulations to the winners in the 2024 Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Belgium! Click on their names to find bios and videos of their performances.
- First Prize (€25,000): Dmytro Udovychenko, of Ukraine
- Second Prize (€20,000): Joshua Brown, of the United States
- Third Prize (€17,000): Elli Choi, of the United States
- Fourth Prize (€12,500): Kevin Zhu, of the United States
- Fifth Prize (€10,000): Julian Rhee, of the United States
- Sixth Prize (€8,000): Minami Yoshida, of Japan
Violinist Dmytro Udovychenko.
The six unranked laureates, listed here in alphabetical order, each will receive €4,000. Click on their names to find bios and videos of their performances.
- Hana Chang, of the United States
- SongHa Choi, of Korea
- Anna Im, of Korea
- Karen Su, of the United States
- Ruslan Talas, of Kazakhstan
- Dayoon You, of Korea
Dmytro Udovychenko trained at the Kharkiv Specialized Music Boarding School under Ludmila Varenina and at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen under Boris Garlitsky. He perfected his skills in masterclasses with Ana Chumachenco, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Stephan Picard and Leonidas Kavakos. In 2022 he was accepted into the class of Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy. Dmytro Udovychenko has won the Heifetz Competition in Vilnius, the Odessa Competition and the Grand Prize of the Andrea Postacchini Competition in Fermo. In 2018 he won the Second Prize, Audience Prize and Internet Community Prize at the Josef Joachim Competition in Hanover. More recently, he was awarded Third Prize at the Sibelius Competition and First Prize at the Singapore and Montréal Competitions. He is supported by the Vere Music Fund, Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz and Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.
BELOW: Dmytro performs Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 with Belgian National Orchestra, with conductor Antony Hermus, in the Finals:
BELOW: Dmytro performs Mozart Concerto n. 2 in D major in the Semi-finals.
BELOW: Dmytro performs an excerpt from Eugène Ysaÿe Sonata in D minor op. 27/3, in the first round:
BELOW: Dmytro performs Alfred Schnittke Sonata No. 1:
Laureates' recitals will take place June 5 and 6 at Flagey, with a Laureates' concert June 10 at Bozar, and a Closing Concert on June 12 at Bozar. Watch them on the Queen Elisabeth Competition website, at this link.
The jury for the 2024 violin edition included Chairman Gilles Ledure, Midori, Vadim Repin, Augustin Dumay, Miriam Fried, Lorenzo Gatto, Philippe Graffin, Koichiro Harada, Dong-Suk Kang, Victor Kissine, Kyung Sun Lee, Tatiana Samouil, Vineta Sareika, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Baiba Skride and Isabelle Van Keulen.
You might also like:
- Interview with Violinist Dmitro Udovychenko, Winner of the 2023 Montreal Violin Competition
- Ji Young Lim wins the 2015 Queen Elisabeth Competition
- Stella Chen of the U.S. wins the 2019 Queen Elisabeth Competition
- Finalists Announced in the 2024 Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition
- Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition Names 24 Semi-Finalists
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Daria, could be, but you should have heard him live. He is a phenomenon regardless of his nationality. His sound is unbelievable and he bows almost everything in the lower half, incredible bowing arm. The level at this competition was insanely high. I mean, another phenomenon, Kevin Zhu, was "only" 4th, and at least from my perspective his performance was indeed notably below those of the top 3. Joshua Brown, the number 2, gave one of the noblest performances of Brahms you can imagine. Very close to how Milstein plays it. Elli Choi, number 3, gave a totally appropriate and at the same time perfect rendition and interpretation of Shostakovich. Shostakovich 1st concerto is clearly a prize winner here in Brussels, as shown over the past history.
Absolutely, I'm not denying the quality of his playing. I'm just against awarding prizes based on nationality (which can be suspected in his case) because he's not the only extraordinary competitor in these competitions and it's interesting that the prize always goes to him. My critique is directed to judges, not to Dmytro.
"Don't you find it interesting that an Ukrainian violinist won every single violin competiton he participated since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022?"
He won a lot of competitions before the war as well:
https://emcy.org/prize-winners/dmytro-udovychenko/
And there is no trend that winning a competition is easier just because you are from the Ukraine. Aleksey Semenenko got prizes in lot of competitions before the war (QE, Paganini, Goldstein etc).
Sibelius 2022 - Korean
Nielsen 2022 - Split between Estonia and Ukraine (Bohdan Luts).
Enescu 2022 - Romania
Grumiaux 2022 - Japan
Wieniawski 2022 - Japan
Kreisler 2022 - Brazil
Indianapolis 2022 - US
Marteau 2023 - Netherlands
Long-Thibaud-Crespin 2023 - Ukraine (Bohdan Luts)
Montreal 2023 - Ukraine (Dmytro Udovychenko)
Queen Elisabeth 2024 - Ukraine (Dmytro Udovychenko)
Or are you arguing that it is unusual for a violinist like Dmytro Udovychenko to play better now than a few years ago?
How is it possible to win a competition without participating? I said he won every single competition he PARTICIPATED IN since 2022, and he didn't participate in 85% of these competitions you listed here. It is not unusual for a violinist to play better now than a few years ago and again, I'm not criticising his playing, but the correlation between the number of his first prizes on very important competitions and the ongoing political situation certainly exists.
For starters, he didn't win "every single competition he PARTICIPATED IN since 2022".
Secondly you wrote "I'm just against awarding prizes based on nationality (which can be suspected in his case)". And I showed that there was no such thing, at least for Ukraine in these cases.
I must ask... Wouldn't it be more odd if he was out of the podium on all competitions he participated in and then got a "one hit wonder" in the QE? Isn't it more likely that an amazing player wins most of the competitions he/she enters? Like Ilya Kaler or Viktoria Mullova?
True, it would be odd if he only won the QE, but for me it's equally weird to constantly win every competition he enters when there are so many strong participants (the QE for example, the finals were really exciting to listen to because the quality of everyone is on an exceptionally high level) and everyone knows that the juries at different competitions have different tastes, so how come that his playing always matches their taste? Also, in the competitions listed on EMCY webpage he didn't always get first prize and his streak of first prizes wasn't as nearly as long as it is from 2022 to now. Again, I'm not saying that he didn't deserve to win. I just got the impression that his first prizes do not come just from the quality of his playing, but some other factors which I mentioned in the previous comments.
So "Daria" you are saying that all these completely different jury panels in different countries - juries that include in this case Gilles Ledure, Midori, Vadim Repin, Augustin Dumay, Miriam Fried, Lorenzo Gatto, Philippe Graffin, Koichiro Harada, Dong-Suk Kang, Victor Kissine, Kyung Sun Lee, Tatiana Samouil, Vineta Sareika, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Baiba Skride and Isabelle Van Keulen - are together in some kind of conspiracy to award Ukrainians?
Yes Daria, it appears you are trying to discredit his win as being purely political. The double-speak is not going to be convincing here. You mentioned no "factors" other than that he is Ukrainian. I think we've heard enough.
Here is a review from his performance of the Shostakovich at the Montreal Competition.
There is something odd about it. I do agree.
Michael that’s a non-comment with nothing to back it up.
"It's nasty when the truth starts to come out"
What truth? You have provided no arguments and no evidence nor statistics and you have repeatedly been corrected for your mistakes and you have still not acknowledged that there have not been any abnormal streak of wins for Dmytro. He has won 2 competitions in a row. I know of many violinists that have won 2 or more in a row.
He has not won every competition since 2022, no matter how many times you write that.
Your argument can't be "but he is from the Ukraine". You have to back it up in that case.
Seems like you didn't understand my comments. Winning two or more competitions in a row is unusual in a positive way when talking about some violinists, but in this case, it's unusual in a negative way because Udovychenko is an artist which is still lacking and for him, winning two huge, big name competitions is weird, to put it like that. My argument against all the prizes he has won on such big competitions, no matter where he is from and ignoring the whole context, is that there are more deserving violinists to win the first prize. Now considering the whole political situation and the fact that he didn't shake hands with Repin, there is a certain possibility that there is a political side to all of his achievements. It's just weird to me how his greatest achievements correlate with the political situation rather than his skills, because he didn't improve that much from before 2022 (I've listened both to his older performances and the newer ones).
I am sorry if I am misunderstanding you. I am trying the best I can.
"but in this case, it's unusual in a negative way because Udovychenko is an artist which is still lacking and for him"
-What is lacking? He was my favorite in both the CMIM and the Sibelius. In this competition he vas one of 2 of my favorite participants (the other was Elli Choi).
It is not that unusual to win multiple competitions in a row. In Mo Yang won the Sibelius 2022, as far as I know the won the previous competition he entered as well (Paganini 2015). Sirena Huang won the Oliviera in 2017 and the Indianapolis in 2022. Ray Chen won the Menuhin in 2008 and the QE in 2009. And so on...
"no matter where he is from and ignoring the whole context, is that there are more deserving violinists to win the first prize."
-Who? And why?
"Now considering the whole political situation and the fact that he didn't shake hands with Repin"
-In what way do you think that not shaking hands with a jury member helped him win the prize?
"It's just weird to me how his greatest achievements correlate with the political situation "
-So you are saying that because there is a war in the Ukraine, no one from the Ukraine should win, no matter how god they are? Because then it is "weird"?
" because he didn't improve that much from before 2022 (I've listened both to his older performances and the newer ones)."
-So have I and I don't agree with you. He is a brillinat violinist and I think that he definitly deserved the CMIM and perhaps even the QE.
He was brilliant at Montreal as well (I was personally there for that one but not present at QE) , and among a group of brilliant violinists there, his playing moved me most. So this does not come as any kind of surprise for me.
STOP THE STEEL (A string)!
I don't always like the winner of competitions, but I don't have to trot out conspiracy theories when the judges don't consult me. Often, competition winners are the ones who play most consistently, or have the biggest, brightest sound, or any number of things that were in the air for the judges. Every single competition always has people complaining that the judges are favoring their own students, and in that case, the incentive is pretty clear, but do you imagine that President Zelenskyy is expending his war coffer on rigging violin competitions?
Maybe having your country get torn to pieces gives you something to focus your mind and perform for a greater cause. Do you think that the judges gave Oleksandr Usyk the heavyweight boxing championship the other day because they saw his Ukrainian flag and were cowed? Some of the greatest violinists in history have come from Ukraine, so maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise.
Regarding the handshake, here is what Dmytro told the Violin Channel: “This is just not a matter of any politics for me and I have personally nothing against Maestro Repin himself. He is a wonderful musician and part of the great history of this competition. But just ethically, I felt this was not the right thing to do. For me, whose parents are probably right now under bombing in the City of Kharkov (also known as Kharkiv) by the Russian Federation, to shake the hand of the person who [directs] a festival in the Russian Federation, supported by the Cultural Ministry of the Russian Federation...I just didn't feel that [it would be] the right thing [to do].”
Why is it necessary to list each contestant's nationality? So we can cheer for own team like in the Eurovision song contest?
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June 2, 2024 at 08:44 AM · Don't you find it interesting that an Ukrainian violinist won every single violin competiton he participated since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022? His playing is great, of course, but it is an intersting coincidence, isn't it?